Queensland has produced more than its fair share of colourful politicians. Here are the best
FROM the guy who put his pecker in a glass of plonk to Parliament’s proudly self-declared sexual ‘maiden’, these are Queensland’s most colourful politicians.
National
Don't miss out on the headlines from National. Followed categories will be added to My News.
THERE’S just something about Queensland that produces some truly colourful characters in the political scene.
Maybe it’s the heat and humidity, or perhaps the easy access to the iconic Bundaberg Rum, but over the years the Sunshine State has spawned a whole host of larger than life figures who wound up in public office.
Across local, state and federal politics, here are the most memorable Queensland pollies.
PETER DOWLING
He was a little-known backbench MP in the Campbell Newman-led LNP government until an eyebrow-raising selfie of Peter Dowling emerged in 2013. There’s no gentle way of describing it — the close-up image showed his penis resting in a glass of red wine. He became known as “the plonker” after the picture, sent to his mistress along with explicit text messages, went public. The devout Catholic and married family man stood down as the chair of the Ethics Committee. He was later dumped by his own party at a preselection battle in 2014.
VINCE LESTER
There are two things that really got Nationals MP Vince Lester excited — toilet doors and walking backwards. The intriguing figure of 1980s politics was famed for his hobby of walking backwards, often for hours at a time. He would complete trips in the name of charity, once rear wandering for several hours between two regional towns. When he wasn’t doing that, he was advocating for loo door safety. His long-running crusade was about the need to ensure doors opened outwards, not inward. He dramatically demonstrated why at a press conference in 1981 when he went into a bathroom, feigned a heart attack and showed how difficult it was for rescuers to reach him. He was an MP from 1974 until his retirement in 2004.
PAUL PISASALE
He was once one of the most popular politicians in Queensland history, but former Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale resigned in June, weeks before he was arrested. The colourful figure was famed for many other things — notably, his world record-breaking collection of short-black coffee cups. He began collecting the tiny cups in 1993 and has cabinets full of them. Any visiting dignitaries would receive one as a gift. Pisasale’s other memorable moments include him donning a blonde wig in 2015 to impersonate and tease a rival during a live interview.
MERRI ROSE
Media dubbed her the “Minister for Fun”, having oversight of the Tourism and Racing portfolios in the Queensland Cabinet after her election in 2001. But a succession of high-profile scandals saw Merri Rose’s popularity rapidly wane in the electorate. She was accused of bullying by former staff members and came under fire when it was revealed her son was using her ministerial car. She lost her seat in the 2004 election and in the aftermath, attempted to blackmail then Premier Peter Beattie. Rose demanded a job in the public sector. She was charged, found guilty and spent three months in jail. The nature of the blackmail attempt has been suppressed.
JAMES MCGRATH
He’s now a federal Senator but back in 2012 James McGrath was director of the Liberal-National Party’s 2012 State Election campaign in Queensland when he made headlines for all the wrong reasons. It emerged he had commissioned a sensational dirt file on 49 Labor MPs that included bizarre specifics about where some of their children went to school. Among other salacious claims about sexual orientation, drinking habits and personality traits was details about a senior figure’s epilepsy condition and the fact that he was adopted. Its emergence drew condemnation from all quarters and the LNP insisted the files were shredded. It wasn’t his first scandal — McGrath was sacked by then London Mayor Boris Johnson in 2008, to whom he’d been a chief political adviser, over allegations he made a racist comment.
FIONA SIMPSON
Since her election to State Parliament in 1992, Fiona Simpson has risen through the LNP ranks and was Speaker of the House during the brief Newman era. She also served as Deputy Opposition Leader between 2006 and 2008 and has occasionally been touted as a potential leader. But it was her maiden speech that remains memorable in the House’s hallowed halls. In it, the devout Christian declared that she was, in fact, “a true maiden”. Yes, what you’re thinking is what she meant. She has also sparked controversy by seeming to endorse gay ‘conversion therapy’.
JOH BJELKE-PETERSEN
It’s hard to know where to start with this former Premier of Queensland. Joh Bjelke-Petersen ruled the state from 1968 to 1987 with an uncompromising approach to power. He is most remembered for leading a government that was found by the Fitzgerald Inquiry to be widely corrupt and dangerously intertwined with dodgy cops and illegal activities from gambling to prostitution rackets. Sir Joh was also well known for progress at any cost — historic buildings in the way of new developments had a habit of being mysteriously demolished in the middle of the night. And he disliked protesters so much that he made public gatherings of more than three people an illegal offence. He liked the limelight in good times but despised it in bad — so much so, he demanded a tunnel be built from his office to nearby Parliament House so he could avoid scrutiny on the journey.
BARRY O’SULLIVAN
He’s another current Senator who was once a back office heavyweight of the LNP establishment in Queensland, known for wielding with an iron fist. In 2011, secretly recorded audio of the then party treasurer interviewing a candidate emerged, in which he can be heard verbally brutalising, intimidating and swearing at the man over a gruelling two-hour period. Among the jaw-dropping pearlers was O’Sullivan’s declaration: “You wouldn’t be the first ****ing dead body on the floor of this party, where the problem has got too big.”
RUSS HINZE
Another colourful and controversial figure in the senior ranks of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government, Russ Hinze seemed to have a way of making his cabinet positions work for him. He had the racing portfolio while owning the biggest horse stable in the state and was police minister when booked for speeding. In that latter incident, legend has it he grabbed a map from his glove box, spread it over the young copper’s car and asked the officer to pick which remote outpost he’d like to end up in. But it was his judging of a beer belly competition on the Gold Coast in 1984 and was urged by the crowd to “get ‘em off”. His shirt that is. And so he did. The now iconic photograph went global, with The Sun newspaper in London dubbing the minister “Supergut”.
CLIVE PALMER
The controversial Queensland billionaire likes to have his fingers in many, many pies. Clive Palmer has owned a soccer team, opened a robotic dinosaur exhibit, announced plans to build a replica Titanic and bragged about his part-time hobby of suing people. So when he announced plans to start his own political party, and run as a candidate no less, few took him seriously. But that’s exactly what the property and mining magnate did in 2013. He won the Federal seat of Fairfax and his party went on to briefly share the balance of power when three senators were elected. History will recall Palmer the politician as tardy — he attended just 64 per cent of sitting days in 2014 and 54 per cent in 2015. He rarely spent time in his own electorate. In mid-2016, he announced he wouldn’t be running again. The Palmer United Party also fell apart, bringing an end to his brief flurry on the Canberra scene.
THE MYSTERY THIEF
In 2006 it emerged that an old, large-scale audit of Parliament House’s furniture collection had emerged — and hundreds of thousands of dollars of antiques were long gone. A former staffer brought the audit to then Speaker Tony McGrady’s attention and he alerted police. The property had all gone missing sometime in the 1980s and the witness alleged it was a politician who was likely responsible. “We’d be talking about beautiful chairs, armchairs, maybe bookcases, display cabinets, that sort of stuff,” McGrady told the ABC at the time. How the opportunistic decorator got the items out of such a secure building remains a mystery. A fraction of the missing items were later returned from former staffers, but the bulk of the loot remains at large. News Corp Australia does not suggest that anyone named in this article was responsible.
HAJNAL BAN
A former barrister who turned her sights on politics, Hajnal Ban was a colourful figure in southeast Queensland after he election as a councillor in the Beaudesert region in 2004 at the age of 26. She later ran for state and federal LNP seats unsuccessfully. In 2009, it emerged she had penned a book under a pseudonym about a controversial surgery she underwent several years earlier in Russia to lengthen her legs by eight centimetres. The book was titled God Made Me Small, Surgery Made Me Tall. It was her conduct as a lawyer acting on behalf of an elderly dementia patient that landed her in hot water. Allegations of impropriety emerged around the sale of the man’s property, when it was found funds from the sale wound up in her bank account — not a trust. She was later found guilty of multiple charges, which ended her political career.
KEVIN RUDD
From his awkward laugh to a penchant for wordy language, Kevin Rudd was an unforgettable figure in Canberra. The man from Queensland who came to help, as he once declared, was Australia’s Prime Minister, until he was deposed by his deputy Julia Gillard, who was then knifed by Rudd. He was an intellectual, a former diplomat and, by all accounts, a terrible micromanager who worked the bureaucracy into the ground. His colourful antics included a leaked video showing him absolutely going off, dropping too many F bombs to count, and the revelation that he once visited a strip club in New York.
BOB KATTER
The man with the hat from the bush has been a constant and controversial fixture on the political scene since 1993. He was a Nationals MP until he quit in 2001 and became independent, before launching his own party in 2011. He was also a member of Queensland Parliament, serving as a minister in the Bjelke-Petersen government. Katter is anything but dull. In 1964, he pelted The Beatles with eggs during their tour of Australia. He once declared that there were no homosexuals in Queensland’s north and voted against decriminalising homosexuality. And in 1996 when defending a colleague who’d described citizenship ceremonies as “dewogging” exercises, Katter described critics as “little slanty-eyed ideologues”.
PAULINE HANSON
No list of colourful political figures from Queensland would be complete without a mention of One Nation founder Pauline Hanson. The former fish and chip shop owner achieved a 19 per cent swing at the 1996 federal election as an independent, after being dumped by the Liberals on the eve of the poll, and launched her party a year later. One Nation swept the country at a state and federal level and Hanson dominated discourse in the late 1990s. She was known for her controversial and conservative views on Asian immigration and indigenous benefits. She lost her seat in 1998 and was jailed for electoral fraud in 2003 — a conviction that was later overturned. In 2015 she launched a comeback after repeated failed attempts to get back into politics and this time she succeeded. Her memorable contributions to pop culture include her catchcry “please explain”, appearing on Dancing With The Stars and a book published in her name that asserted lesbian cyborgs would one day take over Australia.
‘Disgusting’: Backlash after Thorpe’s King outbursts
Controversial Senator Lidia Thorpe has been slammed for her protest stunt against King Charles in Parliament. Watch video.
King and Queen charm Canberra
King Charles and Queen Camilla have had a busy day in Canberra as their whirlwind royal tour continues. See photos and follow updates.